thus; throughout these instances, I suppose
them engaged with the compilation
for the month of April in the present
year.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN BULL AND A PERSON OF
                                QUALITY.

PERSON OF Q. So, Bull, how dost?

BULL. My humble duty and service to your
lordship, with your lordship's gracious leave,
—I am tolerable.

PERSON OF Q. The better for a firm, and
durable, and glorious peace; eh, Bull ?

BULL. Humph!

PERSON OF Q. Why, what a curmudgeon
art thou, Bull! Dost thou begrudge the
peace?

BULL. The Lord forbid, my humble duty and
service to your noble lordship. But, I was
thinking (by your lordship's favour) how best
to keep it.

PERSON OF Q. Be easy on that point.
There shall be a great standing-army, and a
great navy, and your relations and friends
shall have more than their share of the bad,
doubtful, and indifferent posts in both.

BULL. How as to the good posts, your
honorable lordship?

PERSON OF Q. Humph! (laughing.)

BULL. Will your noble honour vouchsafe
me a word?

PERSON OF Q. Quickly then, Bull, and
don't be prosy. I can't abide being bored.

BULL. I humbly thank your noble honorable
lordship for your noble honour's kind
permission. Army and navy, I know, will
both be necessary; but, I was thinking
(saving your noble lordship's gracious presence)
that my good friends and allies the
people of France can move in concert in large
bodies, and are accustomed to the use of
arms.

PERSON OF Q. (frowning). A military
nation. None of that here, Bull, none of
that here!

BULL. With your noble lordship's magnificent
toleration, I would respectfully crave
leave to scatter a few deferential syllables in
the radiancy of your noble countenance. I
find that this characteristic is not peculiar to
my friends the French, but belongs, more or
less, to all the peoples of Europe: whereof
the English are the only people possessing
the peculiarity of being quite untrained in
the power of associating to defend themselves,
their children, their women, and their native
land. Will your noble honor's magnanimity
bear with me if I represent that your noble
lordship has, for some years now, discouraged
the old British spirit, and disarmed the
British hand? Your noble honour's Game Preserves,
and political sentiments, have been
the cause of——-

PERSON OF Q. (interrupting). S'death,
Bull, I am bored. Make an end of this.

BULL. With your honor's gracious attention,
I will finish this minute. I was about
to represent, with my humblest duty to your
noble lordship, that if your honorable grace
could find it in your benignity to take the
occasion of this Peace to trust your countrymen
a little — to show some greater confidence
in their love of their country and their loyalty
to their sovereign — to think more of the
peasants and less of the pheasants — and if
your worship's loftiness could deign to encourage
the common English clay to become
moulded into so much of a soldierly shape as
would make it a rampart for the whole empire,
and place the Englishman on an equality
with the Frenchman, the Piedmontese, the
German, the American, the Swiss, your noble
honour would therein do a great right, timely,
which you will otherwise, as certain as
Death, (if your noble lordship will excuse
that levelling word), at last condescend to
try to do in a hurry when it shall be too
late.

PERSON OF Q.  (yawning.) Prithee get out,
Bull. This is revolutionary, and what not;
and I am bored.

BULL. I humbly thank your noble lordship
for your gracious attention. (And so,
bowing low, retires, expressing his high sense
of the courtesy and patience with which he
has had the distinguished honour of being
received.)

I shall conclude by offering one other example
for the guidance of the learned Commission
of forty compilers, which I have no
doubt will be appointed within a short time
after the publication of these suggestions.
It is important, as introducing Mrs. Bull,
and showing how she may be discreetly
admitted into the National Jest-Book, on
occasions, with the conjugal object of eliciting
Mr. Bull's best points.

Example.

           MRS. BULL'S CURLPAPERS.

Bull, in this same month of April, takes it
into his head that he will make a trip to
France. So away he goes, after first repairing
to the warehouse of honest MURRAY in
Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, to buy a guidebook,
and travels with all diligence both to
Paris and Bordeaux. Suddenly, and while
Mrs. Bull supposeth him to be sojourning in
the wine-growing countries, not drinking
water there you may be sure, lo, he re-appeareth
at his own house in London, attended
by a great wagon filled with newspapers!
Mrs. Bull, admiring to see so many newspapers
and those foreign, asks him why he
hath returned so soon and with that cargo?
Saith Bull, "they are French curl-papers for
thy head, my dear." Mrs. Bull protests that
in all her life she never can have need of a
hundredth part of that store. "Any how,"
saith Bull, "put them away in the dark,
housewife, for l am heartily ashamed of them."
"Ashamed of them!" says she. "Yes,"
retorts Bull, "and thus it is. While I was
in France, sweetheart, a deputation waited on